Tourism

Unemployed Skagway residents are getting a financial boost this winter, with up to $2,400 a month in municipal unemployment benefits. The money for the program comes from a gift made last year by Norwegian Cruise Lines.

The deadline to file for the first round of payments is on Monday afternoon.

Last fall, Skagway’s assembly decided that about a quarter of the $2 million gift from the cruise company should be made available to the community as unemployment benefits, in addition to any state or federal benefits.

Assembly member Reba Hylton says the money will help seasonal workers who’ve been struggling to weather the downturn in cruise ship traffic.

“That group of folks got really hit hard by the pandemic, obviously,” Hylton said. “So I’m really happy that this program is being implemented to hopefully help some of the people that have been hit hardest financially.”

Municipal Treasurer Heather Rodig says anyone can qualify if they are currently collecting state or federal unemployment benefits, if their benefits ran out by Sept. 1, or if they’ve lost work due to COVID-19.

“If you’re sick due to COVID and unable to work, or the business that you work for was closed due to COVID closures, you can collect based on that,” Rodig said.

That benefit wasn’t in the original plan, but as Hylton tells it, it’s an addition with timely impacts.

“I rode the ferry coming back, and there was an active case on the ferry, and that person probably isn’t going to be going to work,” Hylton said. “And it’s great that they don’t have to worry about that.”

The program allocates a little over $100,000 a month. There is a limit of $2,400 per month for anyone claiming the additional unemployment benefits. The COVID relief benefit is capped at $1,680, which works out to $120 a day for up to 14 days.

Municipal staff are expecting anywhere from 50 to 100 applicants. If fewer people apply and all the money isn’t spent, the assembly will determine another way to get the leftover funds into the hands of residents who need it.

Rodig says applications are available just inside the front door of Skagway’s City Hall and on the municipal website. She says applicants will need to provide some documentation.

“If you’re applying based on your unemployment status, then we need something from the federal or state agency stating your eligibility for unemployment. If you’re applying for closure or sickness, due to COVID, we need a letter from your employer stating the dates that you were sick or unable to work due to a closure. And then all applications must provide some sort of residency proof which we’re considering your Alaska ID with a Skagway address or your voter registration,” Rodig said.

Eligible months are December through March. The filing deadline for the December benefit is 4:59 p.m. on Jan. 10.

Susan Hayner of Anchorage is grounded in Las Vegas, with three children under 10.

“Oh, you know, we’re fine. We’re just frustrated. We want to get home,” she said. “Kids need to be in school. We need to be at work.”

They made it to Nevada in time for her daughter’s hockey tournament, despite getting stuck in Seattle for 41 hours. Then their return flight was canceled.  Now what was supposed to be a one-week trip is stretching to almost two.

“We just extended our stay in the hotel we were staying at before,” Hayner said. “It’s a Marriott, so it’s decent. But things are starting to add up, you know, unexpected costs.”

Hayner and her family are among the many Alaskans who went out of state over the holidays and are now stuck on an unwanted vacation extension. Nationally, airlines have cancelled more than 15,000 flights since Christmas Eve, due to a combination of weather and employees sidelined by COVID-19.

Alaska Airlines canceled 100 flights on Monday, according to flightaware.com.

That, and the cancellations from prior days, has a lot of Alaskans in the lurch. Wait times on the phone was four hours, Alaska Airlines said on Twitter Monday. That’s an improvement over last week, when the airline reported hold times of 20 hours. Alaska recommends using the website to change reservations. Some travelers report that the website seemed jammed. When they did get through, several told us, they were rebooked on flights leaving five to seven days later.

Hayner considered taking the long way home — flying to other airports to see if they had flights to Anchorage. They considered other carriers. They looked at flights from New York and Atlanta. They even considered going via Hawaii.

“Yeah, we were gonna drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to be on that direct flight. There’s nothing available until January, I think 11^th,” she said. “We’re going to drive to Denver, but there’s nothing out of Denver directly to Anchorage. You have to connect in Seattle. We were gonna drive to Phoenix, but my friends are stuck in Phoenix right now until January 10. There’s absolutely nothing.”

So they were resigned to racking up bills. A longer hotel stay. More days with the rental car. Monday they made a trip to Target for essential supplies, like nail clippers and emergency toys. Each child was allotted a $10 budget.

Meanwhile, back home their doodle misses them, and they owe their dogsitter more with each passing day.

They’ve heard the airline might reimburse them for some of their spending, but they don’t know how much.

Scott McMurren, who writes the Alaska Travelgram newsletter, said it wouldn’t surprise him if Alaska Airlines spread some money around, beyond what’s legally required, to ensure goodwill. He said it seems to him that bad weather is the primary cause of the cancellations.

“My sense is that COVID is a contributing factor, but there was so much bad weather, particularly in Seattle,” he said.

But Hayner said she’d heard it was primarily staffing problems, and to her it feels like this is one more thing lost in the pandemic: the trust she used to have in the reliability of air travel.

“Now, you know, we can’t take anything for granted anymore — like having a set schedule, or arriving at our destination,” she said. “Or going home.”

The only thing Hayner feels she can rely on now is uncertainty.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is once again asking Americans to avoid cruise ship travel. With the emergence of the omicron variant, federal health officials say that even fully vaccinated passengers can catch and spread COVID-19.

On Thursday, the CDC raised the risk level for cruise ship travel to Level 4: its highest level, which means even vaccinated travelers should avoid cruise ships. At the previous level, the CDC was only warning unvaccinated people against cruise ship travel.

There are almost 100 ships with COVID-19 on board that the CDC is currently investigating. 

All cruise ships are sailing in U.S. waters under a conditional sailing order, which means the cruise ship companies have to comply with certain safety regulations and have agreements with the U.S. ports where they dock. That order has been extended until January 15th. 

There is a full slate of cruise ships scheduled to visit Alaska in 2022. The first large ship will arrive in Juneau at the end of April.

There were two giant hurdles preventing cruise ships from coming back to Alaska in April when they usually start showing up. The Canadian border was closed. And even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted its ban on cruises in late 2020, it was replaced with a “conditional sailing order” — a long list of hoops that cruise companies and ports had to jump through before ships could operate in the U.S. again.

But by July, both of those obstacles were overcome and the first in a short parade of large cruise ships docked in Juneau. Three days later, a city official confirmed that a vaccinated cruise ship passenger was infected with COVID-19. The individual did not circulate in Juneau as a tourist and was not treated at the local hospital; they were medevaced out of town. 

When the short cruise season was over and done with, a total of 125,000 passengers came to town, which is less than 10% of the passengers from 2019. That means the city also only received 10% of the revenue it usually gets from head taxes. 

To help with the economic impact to cruise ports in Alaska during the reduced season, Norwegian Cruise Line offered $10 million in no-strings-attached relief money. The Juneau Assembly voted to reject the portion of the money that was flagged for Juneau. Some Assembly members were concerned about what the public would think of the city taking the money. The money was instead given to the Juneau Community Foundation, which distributed the donation among several nonprofits in the area.

Activists in Juneau used the light cruise season as an opportunity to gauge public interest in taking measures to limit cruise ship traffic in the future when the industry inevitably returns in full force. The group calls itself “Juneau Cruise Control,” and in April they started gathering signatures for a ballot measure that would put restrictions on the number of cruise ships that could visit Juneau and the amount of time they could be in port. A group called “Protect Juneau’s Future” quickly mobilized to oppose the proposal. Ultimately, there weren’t enough signatures on the petition to get any of the cruise ship limiting measures on the ballot.

KTOO is looking back at 2021 through the stories that had the widest and strongest impact on the community. Read about the pandemic’s second year in Juneau, the search for Juneau’s missing, or stories about justice in Juneau. 

Tracy’s King Crab Shack has served Alaska king crab below market price for years, but the restaurant isn’t able to do that anymore. Owner Tracy LaBarge said prices have gone up 100%. 

“It’s not a small increase. It’s double what it was in 2019. So that’s been a tough one to take,” LaBarge said.

Crab shortages and inflation are hitting seafood restaurants across the country.

Those crab shortages are being caused by multiple factors. One of the biggest ones in Alaska is that there are just not as many crabs. This year, all major stocks of crab in Bristol Bay were low, not just king crab. 

Forrest Bowers manages commercial fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said that the number of mature male and female crabs has been declining for years.

Mature crabs are the ones that reproduce, and over the last 12 years, fewer and fewer crabs are reaching that age. 

“You know, in general, the reasons why productivity can be lower are that environmental conditions are unfavorable,” Bowers said.

Bowers said there are a lot of factors coming into play that can impact crab populations.

Environmental conditions could be related to effects of climate change — like warming water temperature or ocean acidification — or related to food scarcity or predators. Fishing and bycatch can also impact the crab stock.

The end result of this trend of declining crab stock is that Fish and Game closed the red king crab season in Bristol Bay, and that closure had a direct impact on LaBarge’s restaurant. 

“It’s kind of what we prided ourselves in, was always buying Alaska king crab, this Bristol Bay king crab,” LaBarge said. “So this is kind of the first time that we’re having to go, you know, buy Russian crab or Norwegian crab, basically, just to stay in business. Because the crab season is closed.”

Next season, she will still have other Alaska crabs, like Dungeness, snow or tanner. But not Bristol Bay king crab. 

And there’s still high demand for crab, especially overseas. LaBarge said live markets in China, Japan and South Korea are buying more crab, and that there is always a big push for crab around Lunar New Year.

Combine increase demand with the crab shortage and it’s made the price of all species of crab go up a lot. 

“We’re double in our pricing, which is a shock to people who have been longtime customers, you know, but it is what it is. We’re all just trying to survive,” LaBarge said.

Normally, LaBarge already has all her crab purchased for the next tourism season, but with the high prices, she said it didn’t make sense for her to do that. 

She hopes the prices will go down after the holidays and she can buy her crab then. But she also doesn’t want to wait too long and then not have enough crab either. 

LaBarge said this next tourism season will make or break her business. This year’s season was better than 2020 but she still operated at a loss and she can only do that for so long.

“The one thing we’re good at is we’re good at adjusting our menu, we’re good at adjusting our labor. This is 17 years now we’ve been doing this so we’re pretty good at adjusting to the market. But this has been a not a fun one,” LaBarge said.

LaBarge thinks sales next year will be better than this year, but that it’s still just a guessing game at this point.

Renewing your passport isn’t an experience most people would consider streamlined — especially during the pandemic. Getting it processed can take from anywhere between eight to 11 weeks, according to the State Department.

But a new executive order from President Joe Biden hopes to cut down on the amount of time people spend accessing all kinds of government services, like scheduling a call back time with the IRS, applying for Social Security and Medicare benefits online and yes, renewing a passport.

One of the points in a new executive order signed on Monday calls on the Secretary of State to create a system where people can renew their passports online, without having to mail in any physical documents.

“Every interaction between the Federal Government and the public … should be seen as an opportunity for the Government to save an individual’s time (and thus reduce “time taxes”) and to deliver the level of service that the public expects and deserves,” the executive order says.

The White House says the move to streamline the passport renewal process could impact the more than two million daily passengers who come through U.S. airports every year, and help cut down on the time, effort and money it takes to print documents, mail them from a post office and pay using a paper check.

While no further details about the new system have been outlined, the White House says the “new online process will be done with safety and security.”

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